Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has said that about 500 containers belonging to federal and state government agencies have been abandoned at the ports.

The Customs spokesman, Mr Wale Adeniyi, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that 250 of the containers were laden with equipment belonging to Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).

“About 140 of such power equipment were abandoned at the Ports and Cargo Terminal in Tin Can Island Port, while the remaining 110 containers have been moved to Ikorodu Terminal as overtime cargoes. Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources has similarly abandoned 59 containers. Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has 25 containers while the Delta Steel Mills has six.

“Ministry of Power and Steel has 15 containers, Ministry of Works has 10 while the remaining containers belong to the governments of Lagos, Rivers, Ondo and Delta states,” he said. Adeniyi said that some of the containers had arrived in the country since 2006. The Comptroller-General of Customs, Alhaji Dikko Abdullahi, had warned against abandoning containers in the ports.

Abdullahi, while inspecting the Ikorodu Terminal recently, said that such act was against customs’ rules and regulations. He said that Customs had agreed to the request of PHCN to clear the containers from the overtime cargo list, but only 104 containers had been cleared from Ikorodu terminal.

“Enough is enough. We shall consider the practice of abandoning containers as economic sabotage, and we shall treat the perpetrators as such,” Abdullahi said. The Ikorodu Terminal serves as government warehouse for overtime containers transferred from the various ports in Lagos.